Category: Hyouka

This is a bit of a strange arc here. Hyouka is technically a mystery-series, yet there is about 0 seconds of mystery in these past two episodes: it’s the story about the mysterious stolen props. Instead, this arc is about showing off the school that this series takes place in. We’ve seen glimpses so far, but this time we really get a good overview of what the school looks like and what kind of culture it’s got.

This is something that Kyoani often likes to put emphasis on, especially Kanon of all series took place in what really felt like a school, rather than have this be an obligatory place for people to meet. As someone who hasn’t been in a high school for seven years (god, I feel old saying that), I definitely appreciate that.

I also like the variety in this arc a lot: the creators gave everyone something significantly different to do: Chitanda to be overwhelmed by the different clubs, Satoshi keeping track of all of the events, while succeeding in promoting the classics club, Oreki is his usual self doing nothing, and Ibara took care of the tension and drama with her manga club. They balanced together quite nicely.

Oreki had some interesting moments in this episode with Chitanda’s photos, but I also want to talk a bit about the OP. I don’t really like the OP: the visuals aren’t as inspired as the first OP, and the song is just dull J-Pop to me (I think it’s clear by now that I’m really not a fan of J-Pop and J-Rock), but it does stand out in how it portrays Oreki, especially at the end in which the rest of the characters doodle on his face and he gets angry and starts chasing them…. now does that really sound in-character? Would he really be the type of character who would get so pissed off by this that he’d forget his own laziness and start chasing people?
Rating: Excellent

The school festival arc, in which there actually are no mysteries. The problem with such an arc is that it has been done to death: you’re really going to have to bring something new to the table if you want to stand out. And yeah, I guess Hyouka did that with its trademark solid acting.

The thing with this episode was that it was full of life. This wasn’t just about the Classics club, but the entire school here was doing activities, and this episode was a great opportunity to show what the rest of the school looks like and who attend it. It’s a great way of world building. It’s a bit disappointing that there was no mystery to solve, but the problem of this episode was quite creative and realistic so that makes up for that.

Oreki in this episode was great: his portrayal of just doing nothing for the entire episode and liking it really fit his character. Ibara also showed a new side of herself. The pressures from the rest of her club members were really well portrayed here. Satoshi meanwhile was surprisingly more annoying than usual, and Chintanda was a bit of a sell-out in which the creator s were obviously trying to stuff her in as many outfits as possible here.

As for the new ED, couldn’t you really have been a bit more subtle Kyoani?
Rating: *+ (Great)

Before when Oreki made up a theory that was wrong, he’d simply have missed a few details. This was really well used in this episode, in which it turns out that the solution he provided was wrong in every way and instead the theory by the props guy seems to have been the closest. Instead, his story completely failed to take into account the mindset of the scriptwriter.

I really like how this episode actually filled in some of plotholes that were introduced in the previous episode. I remember noting why nobody just directly asked Hongou what kind of ending she intended, and I really thought that that would be just glossed over. Instead that turned out to be the key to this mystery: the ending she intended was inconsistent with what everyone filmed and the movie club was just in need of a new ending. It completely falls in line with how Hongou was unfamiliar with writing mystery is: she’s not going to think of elaborate schemes.

The arc did withhold one vital piece of information though: the story poll that showed how the class thought about the murder. That really was the big clue about this mystery, and I am a bit dissatisfied with how it was glossed over how Oreki got his hands on it.

Also, it’s ironic how there are series with episodes that aired on the same day (I’m late, I know) that feature Tarot cards. The interesting part is that Hyouka did do its research and actually looked into the symbolism behind each card. Arcana Famiglia? Let’s have the guy with Strength become really strong, and make “The Fool” an idiot. I can already see them surround the guy with the “Death”-card with lots of death symbolism. The background on Hyouka overall is really solid. I first thought than the creators would disprove Oreki’s theory of the audience trick with the 20 commandments and the 10 rules for mystery, but instead they went even further and analyzed the works of Arthur Conan Doyle for all this.

Finally: who was the person that Irisu was chatting with? At first I thought that this was Hongou, but that didn’t turn out to be true when she suddenly revealed that she was on the other side of the world and started insulting Hongou. Irisu overall was a great character here: she just appeared in one arc, but there are a ton of details about her character that set her apart, and how she manipulated everyone in order to get the movie project done right.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

What I find to be strange is that the creators go out of their way to mention the 20 rules of mystery, only to ignore a few of them, most notably the rules that state that there should be one and only one detective. For the finished product, one of the characters had to step up and take the role as detective, or perhaps the seventh person that the writer was looking for was supposed to have been that person.

Apart from that I guess Oreki’s theory fits most of the rules if you very broadly interpret them. In particular there is Knox’s first rule which says that the culprit should be mentioned in an early part of the story. Yeah, I guess that he was “mentioned” by being there through the entire course of the movie: it’s a different medium than what these rules were intended for after all. Or take the rule that says that the culprit must have played a more or less prominent part in the story: again, he has, you just didn’t realize it. There is one rule I’m a bit iffy about though: the one that says that no willful tricks may be played upon the reader. Did Oreki assume that the usage of a cameraman as an actual character wasn’t so much a trick, as it was something that is just a part of the movie?

Still, it’s pretty interesting to think that he did get things wrong. With the Hyouka mystery he only missed a few parts, but this rope is a pretty big thing to miss out on. The acting was also really well done at that moment where Mayaka called Hotarou out on this, and we definitely got to see some new sides of the characters.
Rating: *+ (Great)

So, this episode was there in order to analyze the mystery presented at the previous episode from many different angles, both from the perspective of the three amateur detectives, and from the main characters themselves. The three theories from the amateur detectives were pretty quickly shot down, but this was definitely an interesting episode, as they all had their own theories, and used their own perspective.

Now, knowing this series, there probably is a very important grain of truth in all of their stories, yet the truth is much more nuanced. There was one point when the characters discussed a murderer using the window to escape, and then mentioned leaving traces in the grass. Now, I’m not sure whether they have a special kind of grass in Japan, but the grass I know doesn’t really get destroyed when someone just walks on it.

And inbetween the theories, the creators also found some interesting ways to flesh out the characters, like Satoshi admitting that he’s a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, and Chitanda not being a fan of mystery at all despite starting the classics club. And yeah, Chitanda getting drunk on whisky bonbons. I like the use of alcohol, since it often shows characters showing new sides of themselves, and it’s often strangely ignored in anime. The animators also did a great job of showing Chitanda fiddling with these bonbons and their wrappers.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

The reason why the camera moves so little in anime, aside from panning and zooming, is that it’s really hard to animate backgrounds, on top of animating character-models from different angles. And here Hyouka comes and gives a wonderful rendition of the view of a cameraman walking around. This is only possible with very careful use of CG, and I really have to admit that they blended this in really well with the entire look of an amateur camera. But it’s especially the way they kept all of the character-models consistent in all these frames that is impressive.

The movie was very different from the movie that was made in Haruhi, which was played for comedic effect, but there is one thing about that that they copied over and improved: the bad acting. What I mean by that is that it really feels like it was made by a bunch of high school kids: everyone was acting very stiff, and some were yelling their lines out too loud. Furthermore there were few cuts compared to a professionally made movie, simply because it’s such a hassle to do that.

We’ve also gotten our first long arc again with this. It’s a bit of a strange set-up, and especially the three amateur detectives have me a bit puzzled. Going through so much trouble of trying to find the culprit when you could just ask the sick scriptwriter for a small explanation, plus you still need someone to write the rest of the script.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

At the start I was a bit disappointed that out of all the possible locations for a trip, the creators went with a hot spring. Still, this episode had its merits, and I can see that it had fun subverting a lot of cliches that you usually associate with these kinds of episodes. For one, there was more male fanservice than female, visiting them felt more natural and realistic, and the traditional ghost story in the inn had an incredibly simple explanation.

Underlying themes here were siblings, again not portrayed as black and white as usual: these two kids had their issues together, but they weren’t completely hostile against each other. This definitely was meant for both Hotarou and Chitanda to relate to (Hotarou through his sister and Chitanda through not having a sibling), and it worked well. Hotarou’s car sickness also was an interesting touch to his character.

Now, it’s clear now that Hotarou has a large crush on Chitanda. This leaves me to wonder whether the creators have any intention to resole that, or whether they just intend it to be random romantic tension for the sake of romantic tension. Either way, I do like how she lights up in the scenes shot from his perspective.
Rating: * (Good)

This episode was interesting. The mystery was pretty simple, but what caught my attention was how it highlighted the cultural differences between Japan and the west. I mean, for a western guy like me, it very quickly occurred to me that the teacher just misread the small capital a and d, but the characters were making such a big deal out of this and building it up for so much. But yeah, these are Japanese kids who have a completely different alphabet.

This show really likes looking at the meaning of words and letters. We don’t really have that: sure, words have origins and all, but when we talk about the origin of a word we mean to refer to the first time in which the word got used. In Japanese, every kanji has a meaning and a way of writing. Hiragana and Katakana don’t, but this focus on calligraphy is completely different from how we in the west see letters. And with this episode this series tried to bring that same mentality over to the latin alphabet. Quite interesting.

And then there was that bit about the seven deadly sins. And in that discussion I have to praise Chitanda for acknowledging this very important thing that these discussions in anime often seem to ignore: balance. I really enjoy series that are about lots of talking, but I get really annoyed with series with characters who talk just for the sake of talking. A lot of Shaft series for example went way too far with the latter. Hyouka is in the middle of this: it’s got a lot of high schoolers talking to each other in random conversations, but it’s always about something interesting and fleshes out the characters.
Rating: *+ (Great)

So, it indeed looks like Hyouka will be a collection of mystery stories, with this episode closing off the first major arc. And I have to say that even though most of the mysteries were solved last episode, this episode did a very good job of filling in the missing blanks, and making those important enough to be left out. This really puts everything together.

I have to say, it’s quite interesting for the author to have named the title of this series Hyouka of all things, especially since the origin of the word is a lame pun thought up by a high school student. He managed to put a lot of meaning to just that one word, though, with Jun being the victim of an uprising that he had been shoved into with the role of “leader”. The conclusion of this and the hints of how he felt about it: they were a great way for this arc to conclude.

The only big question remaining is who really organized the protests: the student who put Jun into his leader position. With this, I wonder what type of mystery series Hyouka will be: the type that strives to explain everything, or the type that deliberately leaves holes open for the audience to fill in themselves. At this point, both options are possible: on one hand, we are talking about an incident that happened 45 years ago. You won’t be able to remember some details and Oreki’s theories just remain theories without proof. On the other hand though, the past arc did meticulously try to answer the tiny details.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

People actually do research i this serise. People do background checks and look through records very carefully to piece together the puzzle of what happened. It really has been ages since the last “lots of talking” series that was done right, a genre I’m a huge fan of. It’s not the best among them, but just seeing such a series hit the mark again is very satisfying.

What this series still lacks the most compared to the best of the genre is emotion. It’s all very neutral and composed. That’s wonderful as a build-up, and this series can use it, because it’s 21 episodes long. The next step will really be to go wild. But this will come into the picture later on in the series. For now, I loved how each character took his or her time to present what he/she found and the theories he/she had based upon it, and how they all conflict together.

Still, I cannot for the love of me imagine how they would turn this into 21 episodes, or at least without resorting to lots and lots of random stories. This episode looked like it solved about half of the mysteries in this series. THe end of the episode seemed to suggest that about one more episode, perhaps two, would be enough to cover the rest and the deeper meanings behind it, and yet it is the main mystery of this series.

What I also really like is how even though the characters look like the typical idiot teenagers you see everywhere, they actually quite aren’t. Houtarou is at times used as a writer’s vehicle for formulating the right theories, but the rest of the characters feel human in the way they investigate and try to formulate theories, they’re flawed but they really try to use their heads and think over all sorts of possible scenarios. And even Houtarou was wrong in this episode (or at least that is very much hinted).
Rating: ** (Excellent)